Tempest Rising (7 page)

That was it, the best Ramona could do in the here and now. She went to the shed kitchen to get the mop and bucket so she could clean up Shern’s grief trailing from the living room into the kitchen. She pulled on her rubber gloves and walked back through the kitchen, where the girls were sniffing and making the air in the kitchen heavy with their sighs. She hurried through the kitchen back into the living room. She sighed now too and knelt to start cleaning the plastic runner. At least this part she understood.

T
hey didn’t hold Til long. She begged the pardon of the sheriff. Told him what she’d been through that morning seeing her niece’s bedroom bloodied like that. The threats to the case manager were idle, she said. Just a temporary fit of madness caused by her trauma. She’d just wanted to watch over her niece’s babies, is all.

So the sheriff let her go, told her a sitting judge would have to hear her plea to overturn the case manager’s decision. She should get a lawyer, he said, and she should make sure she adhered to the restraining order and not try to make contact with the children because that order had been signed by a judge and a judge would never reverse a case manager’s call in favor of someone who violated one of his rulings. Not that Til could try to see them. She had no idea where they’d been placed. Right now
she thanked God that she at least knew where Clarise was; at least she and Ness and Blue and Show had the powerful motivator of rushing to the bedside of the niece they had raised to force them to pull themselves together.

C
larise knew it was the aunts and uncles even before they turned the corner into her room. She could smell the honey and coconut soap that Til and Ness made by hand and sold mail order four times a year. She wanted to be able to smile, to blow them a kiss, wanted especially to let them know that it wasn’t her wrists she’d tried to slash that morning, just that navy blue haze that had gotten in the way of her yarns. But the clear fluid dripping down the plastic tubing into the largest vein in her arm had a clamp on all her body parts. She couldn’t even stick her tongue out to lick around the corners of her mouth that were so dry they were cracking.

Her uncle Blue noticed. As soon as he stood over her, looking formless around the edges because her eyesight was blurred, and she smelled the cedar that meant he was wearing his chesterfield coat because he kept it hanging in his cedar chifforobe, she heard him say, “My goodness, is there any ice around here? Look at her poor mouth. Aren’t they watching her?”

Show was at his side. “Hey, darling,” he said. “They told us we can only stay five minutes. Yeah, that mouth does look a little parched.”

“Move, Blue, let me see.” Ness pushed her way in
between Blue and Show. “Awl, look at our baby, you gonna be okay, Clarise, you gonna pull through this, yes, you are.”

“Here’s the ice.” Til’s voice was behind the other three. Clarise guessed that she was trying to be the strong one, and if she looked at Clarise right now, arms bandaged almost up to her elbows, flat in this bed with the sides raised like she was an infant in a crib, her attempts at being strong would fade into hushed sobs like the ones starting to rise up from her uncle Show.

Blue scooped a fingerful of ice chips from a Styrofoam cup handed to him by Til and rubbed them around Clarise’s mouth. How good the ice felt, how cool as it melted into the hot, cracked skin around the corners of her mouth. She wanted to say thank you, not just for the ice but for the tough and tender love they’d always wrapped around her. Blue’s eyes were filled up now and getting ready to run a river; she could tell because she could see glimmering light where his eyes should be. Til could too because she nudged him out of the way.

“Need some pretroleum jelly on those lips,” Til said as she looked in Clarise’s face and gently smeared Vaseline around her mouth, especially where her skin was cracking. “Now that doctor out there said you probably can’t talk because of the medicine they’ve got you on; he said you may not even be able to hear us—that is, make sense of what we’re saying—but I personally think he’s the one not making sense, and I do believe you can under
stand me. So I want you to listen good and do what I tell you; you’ve always minded in the past, so don’t you dare start disobeying now. Now I want you to reach way down deep inside of yourself, as deep as you can go; I want you to grab a hold of the rafter you find there. Oh, yes, you got one, everybody does. You just don’t realize it until your life goes liquid on you and rises above your head and you forced to search for something to get you to dry land. Grab that rafter, Clarise. Hold on. You got strong arms, Clarise, hold on. You got to let your grieving take its course, got to let Finch go. He’s already gone, you got to let him go. I know you and he were so close you breathed in sync, and now your breaths are heavy and sad, pushing into the air single file. But you still got a whole lot of life left in you, a whole lot of living to be done, a whole lot of years of helping those daughters grow into women, so you hold on. Hold on tight, and hold on sure. We’re gonna reel you into the riverbank, get you onto solid ground, but baby, you got to hold on.”

They were all standing over her now. Ness was humming softly and rhythmically to the rise and fall of Til’s words. The uncles punctuated what Til said with loud, soupy sniffles. And Clarise tried with everything in her to unclamp her mouth, to tell them she would hold on, for the girls, for them, for the memory of her beloved Finch. But her mouth wouldn’t move, no words would form, and now they were putting on their coats to leave.

They took turns leaning into the prison of a bed
to kiss her good-bye. First Blue, then Show, then Ness, then Til. Til’s fox-foot coat collar stroked her face, and she was flooded with memories of her childhood, and how that collar was her pet because the aunts didn’t believe in live animals roaming freely through the house and wouldn’t let her have a cat or dog. And when everyone was asleep, Til would tiptoe into her bedroom and put the coat around her just so with the collar right against her cheek. Clarise was trying to say “pet,” was hollering it in her head, trying to force the word through her mouth. This time Show noticed.

“What’s she trying to say, Til? Look how wild her eyes are getting. She’s trying to talk, Til.”

“She’s not hurting, is she?” Blue asked, leaning in to look on her face. “Dear God, please don’t let her be in pain.”

“She’s not hurting,” Ness said with confidence. “And, Sister, I do believe you know what she wants.”

Til did. She unbuttoned her coat and eased it from her arms. She arranged it over Clarise so that the collar was against her cheek. “Hold on, Clarise,” she said again as Blue put his chesterfield around Til’s shoulders, and Clarise thought she was seeing something she’d never seen before. A single tear pressed from the corner of Til’s eye and glinted in perfect form against her cheek.

T
he aunts and uncles did hire a lawyer, who strongly reiterated the sheriff’s caution about trying to intercede in the placement of the girls. He looked right at Til when he said it, repeated himself three or four times when Til wouldn’t meet his gaze. Then his words went straight to Til’s heart when he said she could jeopardize the possibility of ever having a relationship with those girls, God forbid. If Clarise were not to recover fully, he said, the restraining order could stay in effect, and those girls could remain in foster care until they were adopted permanently or turned eighteen, whichever happened first. Ness grabbed Til’s hand when he said it; the uncles sucked their breaths sharply and swallowed their screams. And Til dismissed her plan of maybe hiring a detective to find those girls so that she could meet them after school, or at the movies,
or the library, spend an hour or two a week with them, make sure they were being treated well, adjusting emotionally; nobody would have to know, she’d reasoned; the girls would certainly never tell. But this lawyer’s cautionary words made a small hole in her heart, and she let her plan sift through the hole for now and busied herself instead helping Clarise to come back.

They all did over the next month. Kept themselves from violating the judge’s ruling and tracking down the girls by immersing themselves in Clarise’s recovery. They did everything but lift Clarise up and rock her as if she were a newborn. They met the start of visiting hours at her bedside, combed her hair, massaged her scalp. Told her how strong she was. They hummed her favorite songs, rubbed olive oil between her fingers that always seemed dry. Told her how strong she was. They brought her yarns and knitting needles and put them in the top of her closet as an incentive, repeated stories that made her laugh when she was a child. Told her how strong she was. They squeezed each second out of those visiting hours until they were practically thrown out and Til would say, “Wait, wait, one last thing I got to do.” Then she’d cover Clarise with her fox-foot–collared coat.

And Clarise was responding. The tube that had dripped that immobilizing fluid into her arms had been removed, so she was sitting up for longer periods during the day, talking in short phrases, but at least she was talking. And asking, all the time ask
ing, about her girls. Smiled weakly when the aunts and uncles lied to her, told her the girls were doing fine, that they sent their love, underage, though, so they couldn’t visit. “Ah, but, Clarise, they truly send their love.”

A
nd the girls had sent their love over that month, through their constant thinking about their mother, longing for her, praying for her recovery and that they would soon be returned to her and their real home. And even if not that, at least that they could go and live with their aunts and uncles. Because the month in that Addison Street row house with Ramona and the girls was like a cheap leather coat, stiff, letting in the cold when it should be giving off warmth, cracking from the least bit of moisture, patched together with so many seams too easy to come undone.

And the girls were coming undone. Ramona listened to them cry themselves to sleep just about every night. When they weren’t crying, they were quiet, withdrawn, at least in Ramona’s presence, seeming not to want to have anything to do with Ramona. Just as well, Ramona thought, she was herself too occupied. There was breakfast to cook, and their bangs, which needed hot curling before they went to school and she went to her own day job at Lit Brothers bargain basement. There was dinner and dishes, making their lunch for the next day. There was laundry, that cart she despised,
which she lugged to the Laundromat overflowing now with three girls bathing and going through towels as if the towels were Kleenex. There was Tyrone, her sweet country-boy boyfriend, who came by most evenings, trying to beg his way into her bedroom, who’d taken a liking to the girls, though, and sometimes occupied them playing crazy eights or hangman or tic-tac-toe. There was just too much to do, Ramona told herself, to spend time trying to think of ways to draw those girls out. So she listened to them cry and in between did what little she could to distract them from themselves. “Go outside and get some fresh air,” she’d tell them, or, “Go do your homework,” or “Turn the TV on low,” or “Get down on your knees and say your prayers before you go to sleep for the night.” But she didn’t try to draw them out, didn’t really want to carry on real conversation, even as she watched their personalities sneak out during lapses in their outward shows of grief.

She could see that the youngest, Bliss, was combative, smart-mouthed, spunky, though; Ramona was sure she’d heard Bliss laugh at least once since they’d been there. Victoria hadn’t laughed, but she had the mildest manner of the three, always trying to keep peace between those other two. Shern was the most complicated for Ramona to figure, the moodiest, with pitch-black eyes that gave her an intense look. Ramona had to acknowledge the child had beautiful eyes, not that she would ever say such a thing to Shern, too much against her grain to compliment a foster child.

Plus Ramona hadn’t been able to get beyond the apparent opulence the girls had been accustomed to. Most of the foster children came with a modest amount, a brown shopping bag full; some came with the price tag still affixed to what they carried where the social workers had to stop at John Bargain’s just so they could come with something. But Shern, Victoria, and Bliss had come with a loaded trunk and the mind-sets that didn’t understand a thing about stretching the havings, making do until payday. So Ramona was sure an air of superiority was hiding behind Shern’s steely dark eyes. It caused her to speak to all three of the girls in short snippets and usually in a voice that was the texture of burlap.

She spoke to them in that voice right now as the girls stood in the dining room, high-quality wool plaid coats on, and Shern declared that she and her sisters were going to the library.

“Are you asking me or telling me?” Ramona snapped.

“She means, Can we go?” Peacemaking Victoria rushed her words like a tide coming in. “Didn’t you, Shern? Tell Ramona that’s what you meant. Can we, I mean, is it okay if we go to the library?”

“I want her to ask me.” Ramona made herself peer into Shern’s eyes.

Shern was just standing there looking at Ramona, though, as if she were forcing Ramona to take in her eyes.

“I want her to ask me,” Ramona said again, anger seeping into her words. “Ask me, don’t tell
me.” She had her hand on her hip now and was leaning into Shern’s face.

Shern’s eyes went beyond Ramona’s stormy face over to the buffet cart and a brass-tone fruit bowl filled with plastic pears and bananas. She clamped her lips and stared at the plastic fruit and thought about how much she despised the taste of bananas.

The dining room was bright with the morning sun and swathed in an unsettled quiet. The quiet held, like a plane that’s circling because it can’t get clearance to land. Victoria couldn’t tolerate the quiet. To her the quiet was a prelude to disaster, like Ramona hitting Shern, hurting her; she was getting near hysterical over the thought. “Shern!” Victoria dragged her sister’s name along on a breath that was getting ready to cry. “Why is Shern doing this?” she whined, making waves in the dining-room air, her voice was shaking so.

Bliss jabbed her finger in the air. “I don’t see what the big deal is. My gosh, she’s telling her where we’re going.”

Victoria couldn’t hold it. Told Bliss just to shut up. Then she yelled, “Shern, just ask her, ask her, just ask her, Shern.” Her yelling did unlock the air between Shern and Ramona. Ramona eased back from Shern’s face a bit.

Shern coughed a few times. They both looked at Victoria through the dining-room air. “May my sisters and I go to the library.” Shern said it quickly, startled the air as she said it; she still said it as a declarative, though. All she did really was add the
“may” because there was certainly no questioning tone to her voice.

It was enough for Ramona. “Don’t let the sun-fall beat you back here, you understand me?” she commanded.

“Okay, Ramona,” Victoria said, out of breath from yelling so. “How do we get there?”

Ramona walked out of the dining room without answering. She had to. She had to gather clothes together for the Laundromat. Plus she would have called Shern a little bitch, stashing on her, challenging her like that. She might have even grabbed her by her throat.

“Oh, forget her,” Ramona could hear Bliss saying. “How hard can it be to find the library?”

T
hey did find the library, stopped to ask the mailman if they were headed in the right direction. Stayed there all that Saturday, except when they got hungry and ventured to the corner of Baltimore Avenue for soft pretzels topped with mustard, then back to the library, where the tall windows reminded them of the windows at their real home. They lost themselves in the stacks of books in the young adult section. Checked out two books apiece—
Little Women, Nancy Drew, Uncle Tom’s Cabin
—then lied when the librarian asked them what they were doing so far from home according to the address on their library cards. “Just visiting friends,” Shern said. She figured they’d suffered
enough all month at the Sayre Junior High School when it caught on that they were daughters to the famous dead caterer, Finch, and his almost dead wife, Clarise, and they were forced to endure the whispers behind their backs and the pitying looks in the teachers’ eyes. Shern hated that school. Some days she couldn’t decide which was worse: Mae’s house, where Ramona was always cursing under her breath, or the school, where she looked straight ahead whether she was in class or walking through the crowded, sweaty hallways to avoid conversation. She’d hold her water the entire school day so she wouldn’t have to venture into the bathroom, where, on the one and only day she’d gone in there, the bad girls smoked cigarettes by an open window and looked her up and down and called her snobby bitch. They asked her if she thought she was cute or something walking around in her real mohair sweaters and fur-lined boots. Shern didn’t answer, turned around, and walked back out more angry than afraid, even when she heard them saying to her back that if they weren’t in the middle of a smoke they would have kicked her stuck-up ass. Victoria seemed to be faring only a little better at the school. Her fearfulness over getting beaten up, “moved on,” as the people here called it, made her smile all the time, and say “excuse me, please,” if she brushed up against someone, and look people in the face lest she get called names like Shern. Bliss, though, wasn’t afraid at all, smiled only when she felt like it, adopted the hand-on-hip, roll-around-
neck stance of the bad girls, imitated the teachers when their backs were turned, and acquired a small following of friends who’d lap up her inflated stories about what it was like to grow up rich. In any event, Shern reasoned this librarian would be one less curiosity seeker they’d have to put up with, even though he seemed sincere enough, took time to draw Shern a little map when she kept the lie going and asked him which bus routes did he suggest they take back home. And then they started back to Mae and Ramona’s and got lost for real.

It was the sun. It looked delicious in the sky to these girls who’d just been lulled momentarily by the fantasy lands of the books they’d read. The sun was like a glob of butter melting in a pan to make hot fudge or some other warm sweet thing that the uncles used to surprise and delight them with. They just needed the sweet brightness to stroke their foreheads for a while, so they walked toward the sun, headed west, even though Shern knew they were going wrong; she counted blocks so that when they were ready to turn around and have the sun at their backs, she’d know just how far they had to go.

They were quiet as they walked, no one was crying; their crying had gotten so unpredictable, like brushfires that start out of nowhere and go until they burn themselves out. For the moment the sun diminished the need to cry, and they were suspended in time and could forget that until last month they lived in a grand single home on an old-money block inhabited by professors from the university and a
prominent black doctor and banker and that they were accustomed to ribeye steak, crystal chandeliers, and velvet ribbons for their hair. For the moment they could push from their consciousness that their father, a self-made man who’d amassed his fortune without college, had turned up dead, and their beautiful mother had had a breakdown.

As they watched the sun ooze and drip yellow down the sky, they were just three girls walking, big-legged, brown-skinned anonymous girls with velvety bangs, perfect teeth, and pile-lined good wool coats. Their thick-soled shoes hit the concrete in sync and echoed in a rhythm that was like a chant. The air did a welcoming hum through the branches and the budding leaves, and even the trees seemed to bend on the block where they now walked, like doormen bowing and extending their arms. There were no distractions here, no cars, no houses, no storefronts, no peddlers, not even other walkers. Just the girls, and a park across the street that was conceited and bragged out its ability to turn green in the spring, and a closed-down bread factory on the side where they walked that still scented the air with a hint of butter and flour and yeast when it was breezy out.

For the moment this was their block, and they reveled in its emptiness. They didn’t know, though, that this stretch where they now walked was always deserted this time of day, solely because of the superstitions of people who’d lived here for a while and who’d dubbed this block Dead Block.

And since they didn’t know, when they saw a figure in the park across the street climbing up the underside of a slope in the ground, tall and lean in a plaid trench coat and gray fedora, they just viewed him as an object of curiosity rather than one of fear.

They were oblivious to the haunting legend of Dead Block: that eighteen years before, Donald Booker, a neighborhood boy, a white boy, had vanished in this block of the park, around the time of the great changeover, when the whites began moving away from this neighborhood in a massive tidal wave, as the blacks rode the wave and rushed in behind them, eagerly filling the spaces as if they were playing Monopoly and landing on Park Place. The Bookers had resisted the influx, would call out, “Nigger, go home,” to the backs of the newcomers, write it out in chalk on the pavements in front of their homes, would even sit around on Saturday nights, talk about the crosses they should build, the brand kerosene they should use. But then their own personal tragedy hit; their twelve-year-old disappeared, last seen on the block where the girls now walked. “Like the block just swallowed poor Donald Booker up,” the neighbors canted, even though while he was in their midst, most—black and white alike—readily consented that Donald Booker was a bad seed, incorrigible, disrespectful, meanspirited, vulgar, shoplifting, hate-spewing…. But after he turned up missing and became “poor Donald Booker,” at least a half dozen dogs and cats were said to have vanished from here around the time of
day when the sun was hanging way back in the sky. Brand-new Corvette Stingrays and Mustangs stalled in this block as the day got tangled with the night, and even the birds lay low until the nightfall was complete. A once-prolific bread factory had to close up and relocate a few years ago. Taxes in the city too high, was the official word. But rumor had it that the shift that started at four-thirty refused to report in the winter until after the transition from sun to moon was finished. But since the girls knew nothing about the strangeness Dead Block was said to evoke in people and things this time of day, they took the man only as someone out walking, trying to beat the night and get to where he lived, until he jaunted across the street, straight toward them, and tipped his hat slightly and smiled.